Review of Shawshank Redemption, The (reissue)

Introduction

Starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, Shawshank is a gritty, hard story of life within the American Penal system, and in particular, Shawshank Prison.

Robbins plays the Andy, the city banker convicted for the murder of his wife and her lover superbly. His face gives no clues as to what is really going on in his mind, and doesn`t change even after the horrors that prison life throws at him.

Andy is befriended by Red (Freeman), another lifer who says he is the only resident of Shawshank who was rightly convicted. Red watches over Andy and smoothes his way through his sentence as best he can.

The story reveals the corruption, violence and the ends to which some people will go to protect their earnings, no matter how they are gained and at what cost to others.

Video

The disc has 2 versions of the film, a 4:3 and 16:9 anamorphic, presented on opposite sides of the disc.

For this review I watched the 16:9 version.

I was initially disappointed with the quality of the image, it seeming to suffer from a high amount of dirt on the print and also quite a noticeable wobble and shimmer. This cleared up after the first 30 minutes or so, but it was still a worrying feature for a print that can only be 6 or 7 years old.

The colours nicely defined the period and mood of the prison interior, with a high contrast between the interior and exterior scenes giving a very nice subconscious mood change of being locked up in a small room.

Audio

The Pro-Logic soundtrack heavily used the front channels but almost ignored the surrounds. The steering on the fronts was very well done and used an awful lot to capture the viewers attention to off camera action, some of it best left of camera as well.

Features

The disc includes a theatrical trailer, interviews with the stars, biographies and sub plots.

One word of warning is that not all the features are available from the anamorphic side of the disc.

This is very annoying.

Conclusion

An absolutely outstanding film that should have won at least one of the seven Academy Awards it was nominated for. The cast are all excellent, with cameos and sub plots a plenty to keep the viewer on their toes.

The score is a wonderful piece of work, which captures the mood and despair of a prison existence so well. One minute it is uplifting and the next mournful.

The disc could have been blessed with a better picture and a better 5.1 soundtrack, but this is one of those very rare occasions where the film outshines the presentation, you could almost forgive it anything.